Many companies that import from China pay for a third-party quality inspection before each shipment. At close to $300 per day of work, it quickly amounts to large sums.

Naturally, the question of how to reduce this budget is often asked by top management. They have the uncomfortable feeling of “being on crack”: they know it’s not the right thing to do, but they can’t get off the drug (or very bad things might happen).

So, what can an importer do?

Bad ideas to reduce your quality control expenses:

Skip inspections on all orders below $20,000 (for example)

Pay only for 1 day of inspection, even when the professionals advise to spend several man-days

Look for a cheaper provider of QC inspections (in China there is always a lower price, but the service is usually quite different)

Why are these bad solutions? Because they reduce the amount of medicine without fixing the source of the problem.

What is the source of the problem? Unreliable suppliers, of course, but also poor quality assurance systems on the buyers’ side. Let’s look into this:

Good ideas to reduce your quality control expenses (on the buyer’s side)

Train the suppliers’ technicians and middle managers (not just the salespeople) to your needs

Train one or two of their internal QC employees to do proper inspections, and audit their work regularly

I am not advocating to stop QC inspections right away, but to pay a lot of attention on upstream security instead. Over time, if all goes well, the proverbial “ounce of prevention” should replace most of the “pound of cure”.

What do you think?

Renaud Anjoran is the founder of Sofeast Quality Control and helps importers to improve and secure their product quality in China. He writes advice for importers on the Quality Inspection blog. He lives full time in Shenzhen, China. You can contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..